Memory Text: “Now when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, and overpower and kill them.” Rev. 11:7
The two witnesses, the Old and New Testaments, have been testifying “clothed in sackcloth” for 1,260 years, from 538 AD to 1798 AD. At the end of this time, a beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, overpower them, and kill them.
Who is this beast from the Abyss?
The touchstone of all biblical interpretation is to allow Scripture to interpret Scripture. The Bible is its own interpreter. When we are interpreting Bible prophecy and using the historical method, which is the method of prophetic interpretation Seventh-day Adventists have always used, we are bringing in outside facts, we are bringing in historical narrative external to the Bible. Some might think that since we are doing this, we no longer need to let the Bible interpret itself. But, on the contrary, the use of external historical narrative makes it all the more important to allow Scripture to interpret Scripture, whenever we possibly can.
So where do we go in the Bible to discover the identity of the beast from the abyss? It turns out that John has mentioned this beast just a couple of chapters previously in chapter nine of the Apocalypse:
“And the fifth messenger did sound, and I saw a star out of the heaven having fallen to the earth, and there was given to it the key of the pit of the abyss, and he did open the pit of the abyss, and there came up a smoke out of the pit as smoke of a great furnace, and darkened was the sun and the air, from the smoke of the pit.” Rev. 9:1-2
Who was the “star out of heaven falling to the earth”?
“I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning,” said our Lord. (Luke 10:18) “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning star! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!” said Isaiah in prophecy. (Isa. 14:12) “The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.” (Rev. 12:7-9) “When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth . . .” (Rev. 12:13)
The star that fell from heaven to earth was Lucifer, now Satan.
In the New Testament, the “abyss” is a dark abode where demons are held. “Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’ ‘Legion,’ he replied, because many demons had gone into him. And they begged Jesus repeatedly not to order them to go into the Abyss.” (Luke 8:30-31. See, also, 1 Pet. 3:19; Jude 6). The Abyss is also a place from which demonic beasts emerge. “The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and yet will come up out of the Abyss and go to its destruction.” (Rev. 17:8). After the Second Coming, the lifeless, empty, desolate earth forms an “abyss” in which Satan is locked. (Rev. 20:1-3, 7-10). Satan, having fallen from heaven to earth, is clearly a denizen of the “Abyss.”
I would say that we have an iron-clad identification of “the beast from the Abyss” in Rev. 11:7 as Satan.
The beast from the Abyss represents a new manifestation of Satanic power. He is not here working through the papacy; this is something new and different.
“The period when the two witnesses were to prophesy clothed in sackcloth ended in 1798. As they were approaching the termination of their work in obscurity, war was to be made upon them by the power represented as “the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit.” In many of the nations of Europe the powers that ruled in church and state had for centuries been controlled by Satan through the medium of the papacy. But here is brought to view a new manifestation of satanic power.
It had been Rome's policy, under a profession of reverence for the Bible, to keep it locked up in an unknown tongue and hidden away from the people. Under her rule the witnesses prophesied “clothed in sackcloth.” But another power—the beast from the bottomless pit—was to arise to make open, avowed war upon the word of God. Great Controversy, pages 268-9 (emphasis added)
Please take careful note of what the Lord’s messenger is telling us: The beast that ascended out of the bottomless pit was not the Papacy, not the Roman Catholic Church. This is “a new manifestation of Satanic power.” Not the old manifestation, but rather a new manifestation.
Let me put this into language conspiracy-minded conservative Adventists will understand: The Revolutionary Left is not Jesuits pretending to be Leftists and faux striking out against Rome but it is really all just a pantomime. No, this is real. This is two different forces, two different powers (two different kings, in Daniel 11 language).
There is real enmity between this new manifestation of satanic power—the revolutionary Left—and the Roman Catholic Church. When Revolutionary France took the pope captive in 1798, thus dealing the pope “a deadly wound” (Rev. 13:3) that was all real. It was not a pantomime. The Revolutionary Left and the Papacy are not the same thing, and they are not friends.
There are two key facts I want the reader to take away from this series on Revelation 11: Revolutionary Leftism is (1) different than the papacy, and (2) worse. Different and worse. Different and worse. Different and worse.
Is it better to testify clothed in sackcloth or to be overpowered and killed by the beast from the Abyss? Is better to testify clothed in Sackcloth or to lie dead in the street? It is obviously worse for the Scriptures to be killed. It is obviously worse for God’s word to lie dead in the streets. Revolutionary Leftism is different from the Papacy, and worse.
Is it worse to keep the Bible locked up in an unknown tongue and hidden away from the people, or for Satan “to arise to make open, avowed war upon the word of God”? Revolutionary Leftism is different and worse than the Papacy.
Bible prophecy confirms and explains what history tells us. What was worse, France’s Ancien Regime, or the tumbrels and Madame Guillotine? What was worse, the Tsar’s tyranny or the Bolshevik death camps and genocide through famine? What was worse, the authoritarian Batista government or the totalitarian Castro regime. We see the same pattern over and over and over. Revolutionary Leftism is different from the Papacy, and worse.
What does Ellen White say about the French Revolution? “The restraint of God’s spirit was removed . . . Evil was permitted to come to maturity. And all the world saw the result of willful rejection of the light.” Great Controversy, p. 265.1. Revolutionary Leftism is “mature evil,” evil that has resulted from the removal of the restraining spirit of God.
We will be studying this unrestrained, “mature evil” in the weeks ahead.